Core_09_Plato_Lecture3

Socrates & Alcibiades

Organization

Alcibiades Entrance

Come to crown Agathon (212E4-213B7)

Discovery of Socrates and response (banter and drinking; (213B8-214A6)

Shift to speech of praise upon Eryximachus’ intervention (214B1-215A4)

Alcibiades’ Speech

Organized in classical rhetorical manner

1. Intro: What Socrates ‘is like’ – ironical discourse (214A5-215D5)

2. Socrates’ effects on me, Alcibiades.

Exhibition of Alcibiades own shortcomings and Alcibiades’ ambivalent

response (attraction, shame, avoidance) (215D7-216C5).

3. Socrates’ powers and virtues (216C6-222A6).

The seduction:

First try: strategic passive willingness.

Second try: Generation of two situations favoring erotic encounter

and failure to obtain desired result. (217A2-217C7).

Interlude: comment on the seduction by and addictive involvement

with philosophy (217E2-218B8).

Third try: Alcibiades’ initiative, mixing erotic interest with interest in wisdom.

In bed together. Alcibiades’ declaration. Socrates turns A down.

(218C1-219D2)

Other excellences of Socrates: moderation, courage, enduringness, etc.

(219E7-221C2).

Conclusion: Uniqueness; godlikeness; lover and beloved. (221C3-222A6)

Ironical Coda: warning (222A8-222C).

4. Final Dialogue (222C2-223D16).

Interpretations

I. Alcibiades’ Entrance:

“Only tell the truth” (214E8) – How that if so many of the things said are ironical or exaggerations”

1. Self-characterization of Alcibiades through speech and other comportments, drawing on “Entrance:”

Lack of self-control, weak in control.

Bossy, imperious:

Overblown Ego. Narcissism. Self-centered: “Directly from my head to the head …” – as it were: from equally meritorious to equally meritorious. “Will you have a drink with me?” instead of “will you offer me a drink.”

Behaving like someone who is superior in rank or position: his teasing of Euryximachus.

Lack of decorum: break-in without salute and excuse; kissing of Agathon.

Insensitive to social environment, used to just be recognized: Does not acknowledge the guests.

Irony in presentation (not to confused with Socratic irony): “Trapped” ff. and “I shall never forgive you …” and Final Dialogue “He kicks me when I am down …” (220E6)

Contentious: Immediately engages friendly war of words with Socrates. I take both his expressed jealousy and his praise of Socrates’ beauty as ironical. “That magnificent head” – not its appearance, but what it can achieve.

2. Socrates contribution in “Entrance”:

Immediately takes up the challenge for a fight of words: Accusation of jealousy. Constraint of ‘truth’.

Behind both: The playful and staged antagonism between Alcibiades and Socrates. And behind the war of words their erotic attraction to each other. Lovers’ playful quarrel as expression of their love. Socrates: “what it’s like to be in love with him” (213D10). Alcibiades: And an encomium that uses truth about its object.

II. The trajectory of Alcibiades’ Speech.

Note: This is Alcibiades’, in many ways distorted view of Socrates. We will need to correct it through better understanding of the things we learn about Socrates. The distortions work in both directions: towards over-idealization, and towards blindness or deliberate misunderstanding of the positive qualities of Socrates’ love for Alcibiades!

(a) Why does Alcibiades compare Socrates to a Satyr or Silenus?

Silenus:

Socrates:

Marsyas:

Note the double flute, symbol of the several layer of Socrates’ music.

http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agm/ (mp3 file)

Socrates implied to be ugly in appearance. Being driven by bodily erotic drive, seducing others to join in with the Dionysian frenzy through his flute-play. “Power to possess” and “reveal those people ready for Dionysian rites. All this through his words, likened to the seductive quality of the flute-play. So far: Strong sexual-erotic connotation of characterization.

(b). The satyr connotation changes when Alcibiades describes the effects of Socrates powerful words on him:

“ . . . my very own soul starts protesting that my life - my life! – was no better than the most miserable slave’s” . . . ‘isn’t worth living” (215E8 & 216A1). Socrates’ words call for “attention to personal shortcomings”. “Makes me feel shame” about “my way of life”. (Third stage in ladder: “beauty in souls.”)

“. . . traps me; I tear myself away . . .” “Can’t live with him, and can’t live without him.” (216C3)

Two upshots:

(1) Erotic seduction leads to/in the service of ethical education and consciousness. (2) Attraction and repulsion, side by side and simultaneously.

(c). Now synthesis of Satyr and educator, presented as “showing what Socrates really is” (216D1). Strategy: appears to be and do one thing, at the outside – is really something else and does something else through the inside/underside of what he is doing. Socratic Irony as personality and action, not as rhetorical strategy. At the being side: to appear to be one thing, which one is not, in order to be able to be another thing, which one is, but is unable or unwilling to appear as. At the action side: to act in one way, or with an apparent intention, an intention one does not really have, in order to achieve a goal that cannot be pursued directly, but promises to be attained through the apparent action and intention. Systematic indirectness. Serious irony!

First switch back to the erotic,

Crazy about beautiful boys (Stage 2 in the ladder: several beautiful bodies).

Claim of ignorance; sobriety and temperance: a form of loving practical wisdom and knowledge; (Stage 5 of ladder: beauty of knowledge; pursued in an ironical way). Does not care about physical beauty, wealth or fame. Has left behind these loves of the mundane kind, which lead to ‘bad-love’.

(d) New turn: Alcibiades claims insight into the higher loves of Socrates, but mixes or confuses them with his own lower love: “I thought what he really wanted was me.” (217A4). Alcibiades sees the inner and outer, but gets the hierarchy wrong, because of the kind of love that holds sway over him, Alcibiades thinks Socrates acts under the overarching telos of seducing Alcibiades with an interest to intimacy.

Follows the increasingly more active seduction effort and Socrates resistance to let him be seduced into intimacy. Battle between two kinds of desire, and two ways of dealing with physical erotic interest.

No expression of love for physical beauty, or of appreciation/admiration for object (compare to and contrast with Pausanias and Agathon). (217A3-217C1).

After the wrestling fails to arouse Socrates’ interest, the frontal attack. Alcibiades organizes the night where the two are in bed together, and Alcibiades offers himself directly to Socrates: “you can have me, my belongings, anything my friends might have.” (218D1). This goes beyond physical possession, but includes it. Alcibiades casts his offer to self-abandonment in terms of a desire to become the best he can become through Socrates help, by taking Socrates as a lover and friend. Centrally important passage.

Socrates refuses the request giving two reasons: “If I really have in me the power to make you a better man, then you can see in me a beauty that is really beyond description, and makes your own remarkable beauty pale in comparison.” (218E1). Even more strongly: “You offer me the merest appearance of beauty, and in return you want the thing itself, ‘gold in exchange for bronze.” (218E6).

These amount to two theses by Socrates:

Thesis 1: The power to ethically improve Alcibiades has as a corollary the capacity of Alcibiades to see in Socrates he beauty of the idea. But why mention the paling of Alcibiades’ physical beauty? Prima facie, Alcibiades beauty has nothing to do with the power to educate the soul of Alcibiades. Or does it? It functions as an impediment to the power of Socrates, because Alcibiades uses his attraction as a tool for seduction. Even more! Alcibiades (217C7): “I refused to retreat from a battle I myself had begun”. Alcibiades uses his beauty, and the attraction it has for those he wants to be interested in him, as an instrument of power. Socrates is saying: your power tool is weak because I am beyond letting myself be led by physical beauty. In Diotima’s words: “Beauty of body is of no importance” (210C7). Both, Socrates and Alcibiades play a power game. But the goals are different in the two games: Alcibiades affirms power of seduction and seeks the satisfaction of winning, with the supplement of physical pleasure, all based on his physical beauty. Let us retain, for later use, Alcibiades project to use his possession of Socrates to the end of his own betterment. (Compare Agathon’s hope to obtain some of Socrates’ wisdom through proximity at 175D1, and Socrates’ reaction to it).

(e) Upon that Alcibiades abandons himself differently. Before, he actively and graciously offered his body, wealth and company to Socrates. The abandonment was an offer. After the rejection, Alcibiades offers – as it were – his resignation: “your (i.e. Socrates’) turn to consider what you think is best for you and me.” (219A8). Even that surrender softly corrected by Socrates: “what seems best to the two, of us.” And, now in hindsight, but with all the indignation of the rejected lover: “He turned me down; he spurned my beauty.” Where are the insights into the inside of the Silenus at this juncture?

Now Alcibiades, instead of carrying out what he himself asked Socrates to help him with, namely the formation of his personality towards the good, he takes refuge in admiration, and in the role of a junior friend: “I couldn’t help admiring his natural character, his moderation, his fortitude, . . . his strength and wisdom.” Alcibiades here ascribes to Socrates all the important excellences/virtues we have seen lacking in Alcibiades. And some more: enduringness; fortitude; always there to assist a friend in danger (“he saved my life”); calm in crisis. All this is fit for an encomium, and, supposedly true. Alcibiades presents Socrates as uniquely excellent. These excellences are, of course, manifest and overt, not hidden inside the satyr. Note the sacrilegious comparison with deity and emphasizes the importance of Socrates arguments for anyone who wants to become a truly good man” (222A4 -6).

III. Evaluation of Alcibiades and Socrates, using Diotima’s ideas.

A methodological observation: We need to distinguish the light in which Alcibiades and Socrates appear in Alcibiades’ perspective – and the light the text throws at the two and their comportments as lovers. Alcibiades is doubly limited and biased: Like the other speakers he can only address and see what his own ‘make-up’ allows him to. Limits and distortions. In addition, we need to factor in his drunkenness and ironical stance. The text adopts a complex attitude of duplicity. This text is, like Socrates, a Silenus. The Silenus text is one thing at the surface, and another thing at the underside.

The surface meaning of the text:

Socrates is a perfect example of someone who embodies the successful climbing of the ladder. Through that success he is the embodiment of the one who has attained the idea of beauty. Being himself perfectly beautiful in this sense, he is the idea of beauty in the world. He loves the idea. But he is also what all others ought to ascent to. Elevate yourself to his height! Socrates is, thereby, the most lovable! Evidence: He has overcome the craving for one body by appreciating the beauty of many bodies. He has gone beyond admiration for beautiful bodies by learning to appreciate and, what is more, by working at beautifying the souls of others. His fortitude and stance in war show his love for the community, as do occasions not mentioned by Alcibiades, not the least of which is his acceptance of the Death sentence against him for corruption of the Athenian youth. No blemish is mentioned. Alcibiades attacks on Socrates for competing with him for access to Agathon’s beauty will not weigh negatively into the balance of Socrates’ excellence and beauty. Is Alcibiades even serious about it? And, if so, does Socrates in any way cross the line that limits the right kind of attraction by physical beauty?

Held against the surface foil of Socratic perfection Alcibiades looks pretty lacking. He shows his lack of excellences, or just plain positive qualification right at the entrance: lack of self-control, lack of restraint at the side of intimacy. Further confirms them in his speech when he describes his own behavior: He is not only trying to seduce and lure Socrates into intimacy – which would constitute “gaping after just one body”, the lowest step on Diotima’s ladder. He is also using his attraction to overcome Socrates’ resistance, engaging in a power struggle with Socrates. He is anyway obsessed with power and seems to pursue power for his own pleasure, be it upon entering, be it in the playful bantering of his exchanges with Socrates. Alcibiades seeks personal pleasure in the acquisition and execution of power. We will see later (Aristotle) that this is not per se bad if the power is used in the service of the good. But in his person, and here in the Symposium, Alcibiades’ omnipresent pursuit of power is self-serving.

Self-representation:

Of course, Alcibiades is not insensitive to the teaching of Socrates. He confesses that his main interest – his political career – is not ethically valid. We have already moved from the text to Alcibiades’ self-representation. We will see in a moment that even here the text lets Alcibiades appear as worse than he would like to appear. In a confessional mode Alcibiades presents himself as insightful, mentioning his shortcomings and his shame about being unable to overcome those shortcomings in spite of better knowledge. (215D6-216C5). His self-representation appeals to the understanding of his audience (look at the enumeration at 218B1), and thereby to ours. Don’t we all fall short of Socrates’ ‘perfection’? And then Alcibiades moves which shares in the interests. But he also mentions his refusal to listen to Socrates (216A8) and his keeping away from Socrates (216B7). Alcibiades expresses strong ambivalence, attraction and repulsion.

With this self-representation of Alcibiades I return to the perspective of the text. The text is not as indulgent towards Alcibiades, as he would like us to be towards him. The text raises a problem for Alcibiades. He is, throughout, self-indulgent. No sign of an effort to overcome his weaknesses. He has the chance of insight, allows himself the luxury of shame, but makes no effort at change!

But does he not ask Socrates to become his lover and friend in order to become ‘good’ (I cite again, but more completely): “ . . .you can have me, my belongings, anything my friends might have. Nothing is more important to me than becoming the best man I can be, and no one can help me more than you to reach that aim.” (218D1-4). Doesn’t this show the sincerity of Alcibiades pursuit for the good? I do not think so.

I sketch two readings to argue for my thesis, malevolent the first, somewhat friendlier the second.

The first: Alcibiades pays only lip service to the project of becoming ‘the best he can be’. He says that because he knows that Socrates is sensitive to that project and will do what he can to educate Alcibiades’ soul. But Alcibiades is not prepared, perhaps viscerally unable to vanquish his weaknesses. He says that to get Socrates to accept to become his lover. Socrates, it would appear, sees through the strategy.

The second: Let s assume that Alcibiades is sincere in his wish to become Socrates’ lover and friend, and to have Socrates in the same relation to him. Then he tries to aim at excellence via erotic love. (Recall Phaedrus’ speech: the army of lovers . . .). But Diotima’s ladder asks for the erotic interest in the particular person and the pleasure from physical love to at least play second or third fiddle. The other beauties are higher. Erotic beauty and its attraction need to recede. It is not an instrument in the service of excellence. Socrates points it out in his somewhat enigmatic “If I really have in me the power to make you a better man, then you can see in me a beauty that is really beyond description, and makes your own remarkable beauty pale in comparison.” (218E1, cited above). So: Our text says: Alcibiades is insincere, or he gets the hierarchy of beauty wrong. He gets stuck at the lower levels, in spite of he fact that he has an understanding of the right order. Alcibiades is not ‘giving birth in beauty’. Not because he desires Socrates. But because he deals inadequately with this desire, and his uglifying weaknesses more generally.

Finally: And Socrates? Is he really that paragon of excellence he seems to be at the surface of his behavior towards Alcibiades and in Alcibiades’ speech of praise? I see a deep problem also at Socrates’ side, but am uncertain Plato would also see it as such. Alcibiades presents Socrates as a satyr and compares him to Marsyas. These are mythical characters that induce frenzy and live for the pleasure of the senses. Now Socrates, the ironist, is different internally from what he appears to be externally. But does it not remain that he lures his disciple to his instruction with the satyr side of his personality? Alcibiades: “ . . .something much more painful than a snake has bitten me in my most sensitive part-I mean my heart or my soul or whatever you want to call it, which has been struck and bitten by philosophy, whose grip on young and eager souls is much more vicious than a viper’s and makes them do the most amazing things. Now all you people here . . . have all shared in the madness, the Bacchic frenzy of philosophy.” (218A3-218B4). I think Socrates uses erotic attraction, an attraction that draws on the passions, perhaps also on his persona, to draw his interlocutors into his orbit: “he presents himself as your lover and, before you know it, you’re in love with him yourself” (222B3). Doing that, does he not also betray Diotima’s hierarchy, using motives of the lower levels to draw his students to the higher levels, instead of leaving them behind? Who knows, the Alcibiades episode is perhaps a systematic objection to Socrates’ method. Frenzy is not the frame of mind with which one pursues wisdom and knowledge. Socrates, like all the others, suffers from the ambivalence of love, as introduced by Diotima: he is and needs to be cunning and resourceful. He, too, needs to overcome the poverty of the one who does not have, but only pursues. He ISN’t perfect! He only PURSUES beauty and the good as best he can, and that is never perfect for a being in this world. It looks to me as if the Symposium ended on a note of modesty. The problematic (Alcibiades) and the achievable (Socrates) after the normative ideal.